4 ms·
Ask HN: Have you ever cloned a cat?
I see it'll cost about 60K
Getting the genetic material seems trivial.
Can anyone recommend a service?
- linesofcode 8mo agoGive this a shot https://github.com/sharkdp/bat https://github.com/sharkdp/bat But in all seriousness I’m interested in knowing the answer to this too, just out of sheer curiosity.
- deafpolygon 8mo agoSchrodinger’s cat?
- nvader 8mo agoFamously impossible due to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem
- deafpolygon 8mo agobut we won’t know until we look, and possibly destroy the cat in the process!
- btheunissen 8mo agoI’ve been cloning and battling cats for the past week, it’s highly addictive: https://store.steampowered.com/app/686060/Mewgenics/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/686060/Mewgenics/
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- xyzsparetimexyz 8mo agoI know everyone on this site is a Netflix SRE making $450k a year but are people really spending their money on cloning their pets??
- klez 8mo agoI once made a clone of cat(1), making sure not to include the -v option because it's considered harmful. Seriously, though, why are you asking? Was there some breakthrough in biology recently that made it feasible and available? Or are we actually talking about cat(1)?
- derektank 8mo agoCommercial off the shelf animal cloning for pets and animal husbandry has been around for well over a decade at this point.
- fragmede 8mo agoMy clone of cat(1) is called redpanda(no manual) that includes kitty terminal graphics protocol support so I can do `cat nyan.png` and the png rendered to the terminal I'm using (ghostty) instead of cat spewing a bunch of garbage. https://github.com/fragmede/redpanda https://github.com/fragmede/redpanda
- mkl 8mo agoMaybe get a new cat and donate $60k to an animal shelter? I guess the fact of such services existing and competing drives forward and funds genetics research, so from that point of view I'm glad they exist, but it seems like a strange way to spend so much money.
- TheChaplain 8mo agoIt is not strange if you ever had a pet that meant a lot to you. I know people who have grieved for months after losing their cat and their dog. Their connection was much more than "just a pet", it became family and as important as a child, sibling or parent. Cloning is of course not guarantee the pet will be exactly as the original, but if there's a chance it will have similar personality I can very much understand the willingness to pay for it.
- mkl 8mo agoI get missing a pet dearly. I don't get how the clone fixes anything. Replacing them with a clone that has no memories seems like declaring the memories and history mean nothing, and that to me is a strange betrayal of the lost relationship. Grief is hard, but going back is impossible.
- arthurcolle 8mo agoThe cloned cat may still have the opportunity to interact with the original, so it could just be taken in as a "child" kitten of the cloned cat. The project is mostly to prove viability as I've seen focus on dogs and horses. There is a great documentary on a scientist who is cloning Saudi Arabian horses.
- mkl 8mo agoAh, I see. Well it's viable as people are doing it, but as well as being expensive it leads to multiple other cats needing homes: https://www.catster.com/weekly-mews/the-dark-side-of-cat-cloning/ https://www.catster.com/weekly-mews/the-dark-side-of-cat-clo... Seems best avoided.
- Traubenfuchs 8mo agoYes, they looked the same, but behaved completely differently… Wasted money.
- tetha 8mo agoYou paid money to get to the Sematary? I think you may have been scammed by the locals.
- ktpsns 8mo agocat & A UNIX fork is actually a clone of the process, in the first place. (SCNR)
- eimrine 8mo agoCloning vegetables is way simpler, I use to clone my potatoes every year.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Sharlin 8mo agoAnyone with a spare 60K who would use it to clone a cat rather than to improve the lifes of existing cats (donating to local shelters, TNR programs, etc) hardly deserves to have a cat.
- wetpaws 8mo ago[dead]
- binaryturtle 8mo agoI have no idea what genetic material is, but cloning a `cat` is very easy, the instructions in German are very clear: "Nie Kaffee verwenden, sondern immer `tee`!" :) I'm also not sure why it costs `60K` for you? Only `14,320` here.
- KaiserPro 8mo agoyou wouldn't download a cat [00s heavy electric music intensifies]
- potatie 8mo agoIf you do, would be interesting to see how much of the same behaviour is displayed by the new cat so do share
- potatie 8mo agoIf you do, would be interesting to see how much of the same behaviour is shown by the new cat so do share
- swiftcoder 8mo ago> I see it'll cost about 60K It also only has a ~30% success rate, so it might be in the ballpark of $200K to get a living clone
- bertylicious 8mo agoYes, I have and no there aren't any services, because it's illegal almost everywhere. But if you give me the 60k, I'll write a wikihow for it.
- Jordan-117 8mo agoI could maybe see the worth of this if it was a $60k medical bill to save a dying cat. But even a successful clone will only be physically identical, not behaviorally. And it feels like the resemblance would just magnify all the differences. I love cats and dogs dearly, so I don't say this lightly, but please just get a new cat (even the same breed!) and save the money for a worthier cause.
- gpt5 8mo agoInterestingly, the most cloned animal in the world are horses [1]. Given how popular (and expensive) it is for horses, it likely delivers on the results people are looking for. Note that current cloning techniques don't clone the mitochondria, which represents 1%-2% of the genome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_cloning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_cloning
- swiftcoder 8mo agoHorses are also orders of magnitude more valuable (financially) than cats. Nobody is paying $70 million for a cat for their breeding program...
- Zealotux 8mo agoI understand why this post would get flagged but I love the question, it never came to my mind how logical it would be for someone to clone their beloved pet.
- FlingPoo 8mo agoThere’s also something psychologically risky about cloning: If the new cat behaves differently (which it will), you’re forced into one of two painful positions: “This isn’t really them.” “Why aren’t you like you used to be?” That comparison can prevent the new animal from being accepted as its own being.